


fairytales are more than true

by Brinny



Category: Batgirl (Comics), Batman (Comics), DCU, DCU (Comics)
Genre: Barbara Gordon is Batgirl, Best Friends, Childhood Friends, Dick Grayson is Robin, F/M, Friendship/Love, Gen, Happy Ending, Nerdiness
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-22
Updated: 2019-09-22
Packaged: 2020-10-25 16:27:38
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,481
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20727245
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Brinny/pseuds/Brinny
Summary: The boy from the circus meets the Police Commissioner's daughter.





	fairytales are more than true

**Author's Note:**

> This has no plot. You ever write something and, like, not have a reason for it? I dunno. I guess I just wanted Dick and Barbara being all nerdy and adorable. With books. 
> 
> Title is a quote from _Coraline_ by Neil Gaiman and attributed to G.K. Chesterson: “Fairy tales are more than true: not because they tell us that dragons exist, but because they tell us that dragons can be beaten.” 
> 
> Enjoy?

For his ninth birthday, Dick’s mom gives him a copy of _The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood_.

Years after, when she’s gone, he keeps the book tucked under his pillow at night and reads it page by page, over and over, beneath the soft glow of a flashlight.

When it becomes so worn that the cover threatens to come loose from the binding, Bruce tells him that he probably has a first edition somewhere in the library.

Dick has been at the manor for a few months, but he mostly hangs out in his room (or, you know, on the chandelier in the foyer), so it still surprises him just how much Bruce Wayne’s house resembles the board game _Clue_.

“You have a library?” he asks, certain that he’s misheard. “Like a whole room just for books?”

Dick wanders through the stacks, touching his fingers to book spines as he walks, when he almost trips over a girl who’s sitting on the floor, pressed up against one of the shelves.

She looks like she might be around his age, but her face is hidden beneath a mess of red hair and a pair of round tortoiseshell glasses that keep sliding down her nose, so he can’t be sure. There’s an open book on her lap and she’s flipping through the pages at an impressive speed.

“Uh, excuse me?” he asks.

The girl doesn’t look up, but tips the book up a couple of inches, so Dick can glimpse at the title. _A Brief History of Time_.

“Yeah, hey. Hi,” he tries again. “What are you doing here?”

“I’m reading.”

“Right.” He nods his head to show her that he understands that, but she’s so fully engrossed, turning page after page, that she misses the nod completely. He sighs. “Yeah. No, I can see that. I meant here in more of a geographical sense. Like what are you doing here in the Wayne library? Who are you?”

“Oh,” she says. “I’m Barbara.”

She stands, closes the book and, after slipping it back onto the shelf, sticks her hand out in front of her. Confused, Dick takes her hand in his and she gives it a tight, firm shake. He’s never met a kid who uses a handshake as a greeting. Maybe it’s a Gotham thing? Or maybe she’s just weird?

“My dad is Police Commissioner Gordon of the GCPD.”

Dick is pretty sure that doesn’t explain anything. Are daughters of police commissioners in Gotham allowed to break into billionaire’s libraries? Is she telling him this as a threat, so he doesn’t rat her out? Does Gotham not have a real, actual library? And who casually reads Stephen Hawking?

Instead of asking her any of this, he just shrugs and says, “Oh. Okay.”

Barbara drops his hand and, using the back of her wrist, pushes her glasses to sit higher on her nose. Dick can see her curiously narrow her eyes beneath the smudged lenses, with her lips pursed together, like she’s studying him. And after a few silent moments, her mouth moves into a sudden, almost triumphant, smile.

“You’re the boy from the circus,” she says.

Back when he was a part of the Flying Graysons, Dick didn’t mind being known as the boy from the circus. He was the acrobat, the tumbler, the trapeze artist, the showman. He was the son of Mary and John Grayson. He was proud to be the boy from the circus.

But now? Now, being the boy from the circus just means he’s that sad orphan kid who Bruce Wayne took pity on after his parents died in a tragic accident. Now, being the boy from the circus sounds absolutely pathetic, like a childhood fantasy that never really happened, and Dick can feel his face grow hot with embarrassment.

“My name is Dick,” he tells her. “Richard, really. But everyone calls me Dick.”

Barbara’s smile softens and, when she touches her hand to his arm, the heat from his cheeks creeps down his neck. 

“Well, it’s really nice to meet you Dick.”

Later, over dinner, Dick finds out from Bruce that he lets Barbara (who is almost a whole year older than Dick, but two grades ahead, so she’s a freshman, while he’s still stuck in middle school), use the library for homework since Commissioner Gordon is an acquaintance of his and the Gotham City Library is “somewhat lacking”.

“So, she just, what? Comes and goes whenever?”

“No. Her father drops her off on Saturday mornings and alternate Tuesdays and Thursdays after school.”

Dick considers this. “So, you knew she was going to be in the library this morning.

“I did.”

“You sent me there on purpose,” he accuses.

“Yes, to get your book. Did you find a copy?”

He did find a copy. Hardcover, first edition. But he shakes his head and says, “No, you sent me there today, because you wanted me to meet her. Be friends with her or whatever.”

Dick thinks that he can see Bruce smirk. And the entire time that Dick has been at the manor, he’s pretty sure that he’s only ever seen Bruce’s mouth in nothing more than an impassive line, so he really doesn’t know what to make of that.

“Oh, I did, huh?” Bruce asks. Yes, he’s definitely smirking. He even chuckles a little. “Prove it.”

Dick doesn’t really know what to make of that either.

The next time Dick sees the Commissioner’s daughter, it’s a few weeks later, on one of the alternate Tuesdays, and she’s sitting cross-legged on one of the library tables, thumbing through a book by Isaac Asimov. Stacks of hardcovers and paperbacks surround her, all in precarious piles, like a tiny book fort.

“Hey,” he says. “Barbara, right?”

“Hello, Boy from the Circus.”

“It’s Dick.” He pulls out a chair to sit in front of her and sifts through one of the stacks, reading off some of the titles. “_Middlemarch_, _Great Expectations, Tender is the Night, Murder on the Orient Express_.”

“Yeah, I finished my homework early and I wasn’t sure what I was in the mood for,” she says, tucking a finger in between the pages so she doesn’t lose her place. “Turns out it was dystopian science fiction.”

He nods with a low _hmm_ in the back of his throat and aimlessly flips through one of the novels that she’s pulled down.

“Oh, I think you’ll like that one.”

“Yeah?” he asks. Dick closes the book to read the cover. “_Ivanhoe_?”

“It’s full of adventure and romance and an outlaw named Locksley,” she says, almost dropping her Asimov in excitement. “It’s one of my favorites.”

“Locksley?” he repeats. “Like Robin of Locksley?”

“Yes, exactly!” she exclaims as she mimes shooting a bow and arrow, book still in hand. Dick briefly wonders if Bruce told her why he was in the library that first day, but Barbara quickly interrupts his thought, babbling on with, “Did you know that most modern adaptations of Robin Hood use Sir Walter Scott’s version as a basis for his characterization? That whole devil-may-care attitude? All originated from Scott’s poetic words. Something to think about next time you watch _Robin Hood: Men in Tights_. You like Mel Brooks?”

“You’re kind of a nerd, aren’t you?” he asks through a laugh.

Barbara nods, eyes big and wide beneath her glasses. “Oh, yes. Huge, huge nerd.”

“Maybe you can help me pass my History final,” he mumbles, his cheeks flushing pink. He really wishes he could stop blushing in front of Barbara, but it is embarrassing that his last paper had earned him a _D_. He was supposed to bring it back to his teacher with Bruce’s signature, but he hid it in the bottom of his bookbag instead. 

“Do you really need help?” she asks. “Because, I could tutor you. I usually finish up my own work at least an hour or two before my dad comes to pick me up.”

Dick slides the copy of _Ivanhoe_ into his lap, so he doesn’t forget to take it back up to his room, and shrugs.

“I’m just finding it kind of hard to catch up. Like, there’s a lot of reading that the class started before I got there. And, I don’t know, I guess I was learning different stuff before.”

“Well, what were you studying at your old school?”

“I was homeschooled.”

“Right,” she says, nodding softly. “That makes sense.”

He grins up at her and says, kind of sweetly sarcastic, “Yep. The boy from the circus.”

Barbara scrambles off the table, knocking down a couple of the stacks as she climbs over the edge, and taps him on the shoulder with the corner of her book. “Okay, so you and me, alternate Tuesdays and Thursdays. We’ll be study buddies.”

“I guess,” he says. “What’s in it for you?”

She shrugs, pushing at her glasses. “We’re friends, right?”

And Dick holds back a smile (because it feels like the moment his lips upturn at the corners, Bruce will somehow know, and Dick doesn’t want to give him the satisfaction of being right) and nods his head. “Yeah, sure. Of course.”

“I’ve got a good feeling about you, Boy from the Circus.”

On the following Saturday morning, Barbara is back in the library, sitting on the bench beneath the window. A thick book lays open on her bended knees, but her head is turned towards the courtyard outside instead of down at the pages. Dick sits near her feet.

“I really liked that book,” he says. “The _Ivanhoe _one. It was good.”

Barbara looks at him skeptically from the corner of her eye. “You finished it already?”

“Yeah.”

Dick actually finished it on the first night, staying up until the earlier hours of the morning, excitedly flipping through the chapters. When Alfred checked on him around midnight, he was instructed to keep the light off and go to bed, but Dick just waited until the door was closed, then crawled under the covers and read by flashlight until the soft glow of the sunrise lit the pages.

“Wow,” she says. Her eyebrows lift slightly in surprise. “That was quick.”

“I have trouble sleeping,” Dick confesses. “Ever since the accident.”

Barbara’s face softens. “Oh. Sorry.”

“No, it’s okay,” he lies, because he hates it when people look at him the way Barbara is looking at him now, all sad and full of pity. He quickly swallows the hard lump that’s building in his throat and, desperate to change the subject, asks, “What’s today’s book?”

“_The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes_,” she says, over a loud crack of thunder. Dick turns to look out the window, but the glass is obscured by a splattering sheet of rain. Shifting his gaze back to Barbara, he can see that her mouth is set in a big smile. “The weather seemed fitting for a Victorian detective tale: all moody and mysterious, perfect for mayhem and murder.”

“You are deeply strange.”

“Mm,” she says, nodding. She moves her finger down the page and quietly clears her throat before she reads out loud from where she left off, “_It was a quarter past six when we left Baker Street, and it still wanted ten minutes to the hour when we found ourselves in Serpentine Avenue. It was already dusk and the lamps were just being lighted as we paced up and down in front of Briony Lodge, waiting for the coming of its occupant_.”

Dick leans back, then lifts his legs up onto the bench, so his feet are tucked on either side of Barbara’s. He closes his eyes and, as he listens to the soothing and even measure of her voice over the steady drops of rain, it isn’t long before he falls asleep.

The first time Dick sees Barbara outside of the Wayne library (over a year of Saturday mornings and alternate Tuesdays and Thursdays after school) is on the rooftop of the GPCD. They’re both wearing masks.

“So,” he says, “you’re Batgirl, huh?”

“And you’re Robin.” She smirks. “No hood?”

“Robin of Gotham,” he says. He smirks back. “No hood required.”

Barbara nods. “Right. Right, of course.”

He gestures towards her cape and cowl. “Big fan of the Bat?”

“No,” she says, much too quickly for it to be anything other than a lie. “I’m a big fan of justice.”

She lifts a hand, looking like she’s about to adjust her glasses before remembering that she’s not wearing them, and touches a gloved finger to one of the bat ears instead, almost embarrassed. And when her cheeks glow pink, Dick bites back a grin, because it’s finally her who’s blushing for once and not him.

He grabs her hand and drags her to the edge of the building. And before he leaps off the rooftop (always the boy from the circus, which maybe isn’t such a bad thing), he shouts, “C’mon, let’s go kick some bad guy ass.”

Sometimes, Barbara leaves him books on his nightstand, with notes written on torn scraps of paper and tucked into the pages for him to find.

She leaves him an untranslated Dostoevsky: _You speak Russian, right? (Ya plokha gavaryoo pa rooskee.) Best of luck, Babs_.

She leaves him the first book in a series about a boy wizard: _A nice, easy read. Best enjoyed with a cup of tea. Love, Babs_

She leaves him a confusingly beautiful story about a reader reading a book with the same title: _“Reading is going toward something that is about to be, and no one yet knows what it will be.” XO, Babs_

And she leaves him Greek mythology and dime-store detective novels and poetry and memoirs written by scientists and every adaptation of _Robin Hood _that she can find.

When Barbara decides that she’s bored with her senior AP physics homework, she suggests to Dick that they rank the current members of the Justice League. Dick wants to list them from best to worst, but Barbara nixes that idea based on “too many quantitative variables”, insisting those types of rankings would require detailed charts and measurements of everyone’s powers, skills, and abilities. It would be easier, she thinks, to list the team members in order of favorite to least favorite.

“You’re such a buzzkill,” Dick says.

But it doesn’t really matter, because Superman is at the top of all his lists anyway.

“Supes, huh?” she asks. She makes a mark in her notebook, then taps the cap of her pen against the spiral binding. “Interesting.”

“What? Clark’s awesome.”

“Oh, I don’t disagree,” she says. Dick watches as she thoughtfully pushes at the bridge of her glasses with a finger, before flinging her hand wildly in the air. “I guess I just assumed that you’d have, like, a total hard-on for Green Arrow.”

Dick’s forehead creases in confusion. “Why?”

“Because of your intense Robin Hood fetish. I thought your love of Sherwood’s archer might extend to Star City’s.”

“You’ve met Oliver, right?”

She drops her hand, then fiddles with her glasses again. “Okay. Okay, yeah, I guess that’s fair.”

“And I don’t have a fetish.” His cheeks hold the slightest blush at her accusation, but he still insists, “Intense or otherwise.”

“Oh, please.” Babs rolls her eyes, dramatically. “You don’t have a fetish? Then how else do you explain the tights and the tunic, _Robin_?”

“The tights allow for a full range of lower body motion and the tunic is basically a bullet proof vest,” he tells her. “Oh, and also it’s a costume.”

“Yes,” she says. “But it’s a costume that’s heavily inspired by a fictional character who robbed from the rich and gave to the poor. Honestly, I’m surprised you haven’t coopted Roy’s arrows.”

“Says the Batman fangirl,” he teases.

Babs pushes her shoulder into his and laughs. “Not much of an insult coming from his sidekick.”

“Partner,” Dick corrects with a smile, his head bobbing in a quick nod. “It’s the Dynamic Duo. Not the Bat and with him, as always, the Bird.”

Her mouth sets in a light, almost sarcastic, wince and Barbara asks, “I guess you’re usually too busy quipping to hear what the Joker calls you, huh?”

“Whatever,” he says, dismissively. Because even if she’s making it up, he really shouldn’t care what a lunatic like the Joker thinks of him. Though it doesn’t stop him from adding, “Maybe I’ll go solo one day and have my own sidekick.”

“Oh yeah?”

“Yeah,” he says. He leans forward, putting his mouth to her ear. “I was thinking like a cute, sassy redhead.”

She nods, seriously. “Well, I’m sure Wally would be more than happy to take the job.”

When Bruce hosts a charity gala at the manor, Dick dutifully puts on a suit and smiles big and wide for staged photographs that’ll appear in tomorrow’s gossip magazines, with captions of: _Richard Grayson, adopted son of playboy billionaire Bruce Wayne_.

(Sometimes the articles below will mention how Dick’s parents died tragically or how he used to be an acrobat and this scrappy circus kid is possibly set to inherit the Wayne fortune, but lately Dick has noticed that the bulk of the paragraphs seem to be more focused on who he may or may not be dating at any given time, as if the love life of a teenager is in any way fascinating to the general public.)

Tonight, the event is for the GPCD, some kind of policeman’s ball, so Barbara is there, walking around with a glass of champagne that she can’t legally drink and desperately trying not to look bored.

Stuck in a cluster of her dad’s coworkers, she mouths “help me” from across the room, and Dick lets out a snort. He grabs a cocktail napkin off the bar and scribbles out a quick note. With the napkin folded into quarters and balled up in his fist, he motions for her to join him.

She makes her way through the crowd, looking unsteady and unsure in her dress and heels (which is crazy, because she’s all red hair and pale skin and absolutely freaking gorgeous), and nervously twisting the stem of her champagne flute between her thumb and forefinger. Dick brushes her hair off one shoulder, his fingers briefly slipping beneath the thin strap of her dress, then lets his mouth brush along the shell of her ear and whispers, “Five minutes.”

Before he leaves, he slips the note into her hand.

_Meet me in our spot. -DG_

And he and Babs spend the rest of the night in the library, half-drunk on stolen champagne as they take turns reading Dickens out loud, in ridiculously exaggerated English accents, until they fall asleep between the stacks.

The next day, at breakfast, Bruce hands Dick a copy the _Gotham Gazette _with a photo of Dick and Barbara on the front page of the Arts and Entertainment section. And there, in black and white, are his lips against her ear, with one of his hands tightly cupped around hers and the other tangled in her hair.

Dick groans into his coffee. “You have got to be kidding me. Bruce, this isn’t what it looks like.”

“I see,” he says. He leans over Dick’s shoulder as he reads, “_Richard Grayson, adopted son of playboy billionaire Bruce Wayne_, _openly flirts with Police Commissioner’s daughter, perhaps once and for all ending the long-debated argument of nature versus nurture_. You’re Richard Grayson, are you not?”

“Yes.”

“And that’s the Police Commissioner’s daughter?”

“Yes.”

“So, now that we’ve established the accuracy of those facts, perhaps you could tell me what I’m missing? Where is the falsehood?”

“Well, first of all, I’d argue that flirting is completely subjective, so really, who’s to say what does or does not constitute—”

He stops when he sees the slight smirk appear on the corner of Bruce’s mouth. Bruce is just messing with him. Bruce doesn’t care that some Vicki Vale wannabe wants to make up some outlandish story out of a literal snapshot of a moment between him and Barbara. Bruce probably doesn’t even care if Dick was flirting with Commissioner Gordon’s daughter (which he definitely wasn’t), he just wants to see Dick squirm.

Dick scowls up at him. “You’re an asshole.”

Bruce laughs. “Prove it.”

Dick sits next to Barbara on the small, twin-sized bed in her college dorm room, slowly moving his thumb across her mouth, touch gentle as she winces. Her lower lip is fat with blood and a dark bruise spreads down towards her chin.

“You gotta be more careful, Babs.”

“Aww, look at you all concerned,” she says. She tries to smile at his fussing, but her swollen lip refuses to cooperate, so she takes his hand in hers, curling her fingers along the outer edge of his palm. “And I blocked that punch. I mean, yes, I blocked it with my face. But my mouth did stop his fist. Right?”

Dick sighs. “Don’t joke.”

“Oh, lighten up,” she says. “I’m allowed to joke once and a while. Don’t worry, Boy-Punder, I’m not trying to come for your title, okay?”

“Barbara, could you try to take this seriously, please? For me?” he asks. “Because things looked like they were getting pretty bad before I showed up and I can’t always be there to run interference when you get yourself in trouble.”

“Excuse me?” Barbara angrily drops his hand and folds her arms across her chest. “What did you just say?”

“No, I didn’t mean it like that,” he says, shaking his head. He closes his eyes briefly, but then he can still see her on her knees, blood pouring from her mouth, and it makes his stomach turn. “I was just worried about you, that’s all.”

“Well, that’s sweet, but I can handle myself in a fight, Dick,” she says. “And maybe I’m not some trained-acrobat-boy-from-the-circus who’s always ready to leap off buildings when things get too dangerous, and yeah, sometimes I’m going to mess up, because I’m not the fastest either, but I’m good at what I do and I don’t need you to play knight in shining armor.”

“I know. I do know that.”

“Do you?”

“Yes.”

“Because maybe you have this savior complex from some fairy tale that you used to sleep with under your pillow.”

“Hey,” he protests with a flinch, as if she hit him. “Ouch.”

“Sorry, that was mean,” she agrees. Her face softens a bit and she reaches for his hand again, twisting her fingers together with his. “But you do know that this thing where you think you’re Superman rescuing Lois Lane isn’t exactly cute, right?”

He sighs again. “I know you don’t need rescuing, Babs. Okay? I just don’t like seeing you get hurt. You’re my best friend.”

“Friends are supposed to trust each other, Dick.”

“Yeah. And they also have each other’s backs. That’s all I’m saying.”

“I don’t need you thinking I’m some helpless girl who can’t do the job.”

“Needing help isn’t the same thing as being helpless, Babs.”

She narrows her eyes. “Who let you audit _An Introduction to Psychology _class?”

“Wow. You’re really on a roll with the jokes today, aren’t you?”

She’s quiet before asking, “Am I really your best friend?”

“Well, yeah, goofus. Of course.”

“Huh.”

“You’re my best friend too, Dick,” he says in a falsely, high-pitched voice.

“I don’t sound like that,” she says, through a laugh. Using her free hand, she lightly punches him on the shoulder, her swollen mouth still trying to make its way into a smile.

Dick grins and, keeping his fingers entwined with hers, loops his arm across her shoulders, allowing them both to lean back into the pillows. “Okay, so since we’ve established that you’re my best friend, for your own safety, I’m not going to tell Lois that you reduced her to a train track damsel. And not because you couldn’t totally handle yourself in a fight, it’s just that she’s kind of terrifying.”

“Agreed,” Barbara says, nodding. “And Dick?” She presses a careful, delicate kiss to his cheek and Dick can feel his whole face heat up, as if maybe Babs is something just a little bit more than his best friend. “You’re my best friend too.”

For his eighteenth birthday, Barbara gifts him with her copy of _Ivanhoe_, with the margins all filled with notes and the paragraphs all highlighted and underlined.

Years after, when they’re married, Dick keeps the book tucked into the back of his nightstand drawer, so he can pull open the cover and read the handwritten inscription:

_Happy Birthday, Dick._

_For all the nights when you can’t sleep. _

_Yours always, _

_Barbara_

He moves his thumb over the words (the ink smudged and smeared over the years), then turns the page to the first chapter.

“Hey.” 

Dick looks up to see Barbara standing in the doorway to their bedroom, her hair in a messy bun and her glasses resting low on the bridge of her nose. And when she smiles at him, sort of soft and curious, Dick still feels his cheeks warm and his heart quicken, like the day he first met her in the Wayne library.

“What’re you reading?” she asks. Dick turns the book, so she can read the title. Barbara tips her chin out in thought for a moment, then says, “_In that pleasant district of merry England which is watered by the river Don, there extended in ancient times a large forest, covering the greater part of the beautiful hills and valleys which lie between Sheffield and the pleasant town of Doncaster._”

“You are aware that you and your eidetic memory can be supremely annoying, right?” he asks.

“Mm,” she says, nodding. She presses a quick kiss to the top of his ear, then slides beneath the blankets, curling her body around his. “And yet you still love me.”

He nods back in agreement, but says, “Life has many mysteries.”

She laughs against his chest, but when she peers up at him, her face turns serious. Lifting her glasses to sit higher on her nose, she licks at her lips and curiously narrows her eyes, before asking, “Do you think this was always supposed to be our ending?”

He strokes her cheek with his thumb. “What do you mean?”

“Like, do you think this is how our destiny was written? Finding me in the library when we were kids and becoming friends and me being Batgirl and you being Robin and everything?”

“I don’t know. Maybe.”

“Do you think you were always meant to love me?”

“I just took a leap,” he says, softly. “I think it paid off pretty well.”

Dick holds a hand to her face, tilting her mouth up to his for a kiss.

“Always taking a leap,” Babs says. Reaching up, she sweeps her fingers through his hair, pushing it back from his brow. “That’s my boy from the circus.”


End file.
